


Forget Me Not

by asexualjuliet



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Mass Murder, Thinkin bout Cassidy Casablancas..... feelin emo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:36:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26943007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asexualjuliet/pseuds/asexualjuliet
Summary: Mac spends most of her time trying to forget.Or, Parker finds out about Cassidy.
Relationships: Cindy “Mac” Mackenzie & Parker Lee, Past Cassidy “Beaver” Casablancas/Cindy “Mac” Mackenzie
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7





	Forget Me Not

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [start it over](https://archiveofourown.org/works/499125) by [insunshine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/insunshine/pseuds/insunshine). 



> This little thingy has been in my head for a while so I finally just buckled down and wrote it!
> 
> It’s thinking about Parker Lee hours.... I love her.
> 
> The vast majority of this is just my hot takes about the Casablancas brothers... I’ve got some feelings.
> 
> Also for the purposes of this fic, Cassidy is either not a rapist or Mac just doesn’t know he raped Veronica because I fucking hated that they reopened the rape plotline to make a sexual abuse victim into a rapist... not a good move imo  
> (also his being a rapist didn’t track with... _anything_ about his character? If he wasn’t comfortable having sex with Mac, who he genuinely cared about, odds are he’s not gonna rape an unconscious girl at a party. Idk it just rubbed me the wrong way and i Will die mad about it).
> 
> (i did write a whole-ass essay about why making Cassidy the rapist was a shit move so if anyone’s interested i will post it).
> 
> This is quick and messy and not betaed but I hope you enjoy anyway!

Mac spends most of her time trying to forget. 

She’s not very good at it, but she tries. 

The moments when she  _ can _ forget are few and far-between, and they only last a few minutes before her mind lands on something that brings all the memories flooding back, so Mac doesn’t take them for granted. 

She manages to forget for a few minutes about a month after starting at Hearst. She banishes any thought of  _ him  _ from her mind, and she forgets about the thing hidden in the back of her closet. 

“Hey, can I borrow that sweater you were wearing the other night?” asks Parker. Mac raises an eyebrow. 

“You’re like, a head taller than me and twice as skinny,” she points out. Parker shrugs. 

“It’s cute, I know  _ you’re _ not going to a party tonight, and I’m pretty sure I can pull it off,” she says with a smile. 

Her sheer confidence is enough to convince Mac. “In the closet,” she says, nodding her head at the door, and Parker nods before opening it up. 

“On the right side,” Mac clarifies as she watches Parker start her search from the left. 

“Yup!” Parker says, pulling out the sweater by its sleeve. The hanger falls back into the closet and she bends down to pick it up. 

Mac thinks nothing of it until she hears the words “Oh my God, do you have a secret boyfriend you’re not telling me about?”

Mac feels a pang of fear. The mix CD. She forgot about the  _ fucking  _ mix CD. 

He’d given it to her the day before  _ that night,  _ and Mac remembers thinking in the back of her mind how lucky she was to have ended up with the sweetest boy in Neptune. 

_ God, if she’d only known.  _

She can see his smile even now. Timid and blushing and nervously proud as he handed the CD case to her. 

“I hope you like it,” he’d said, and how could she not? It was perfect and sweet and lovely and made especially for  _ her _ by the boy she loved. 

“I love it,” she’d replied, unable to take her eyes off his neatly written words. 

_ For Mac,  _ the CD read,  _ because I like you a lot. Love, Cassidy.  _ There was a little heart next to his name, slightly crooked, as if he’d had to pluck up the courage to draw it, and even then, he was nervous. It made Mac’s heart melt the first time she saw it. 

It had been the first time he’d used the word  _ love,  _ and Mac can remember her face breaking into a smile when she saw it. 

“I like you, too,” she’d said, giving him a quick kiss.

“He’s cute!” Parker says, snapping Mac back to reality. Mac feels her heart clench. She knows just the pictures Parker’s looking at, folded-up photo booth strips Mac can remember shoving into the CD case and hiding in her closet the second she’d gotten home on graduation night. 

“It’s not—” she starts. Parker looks at her curiously. 

“Bad breakup?” she asks, and  _ God,  _ isn’t that understating it?

When Mac doesn’t respond, Parker says “You know you can’t hold onto that shit. Breakups suck, but you can’t keep looking back on the boy and wondering what might have been.”

“He’s dead now,” Mac says bluntly, and Parker looks horrified at her words. 

“Oh my God,” she says. “God, Mac I’m so sorry, I—”

_ “Please  _ don’t be,” says Mac, and Parker looks confused. 

Mac takes a deep breath. “You know the Neptune Teen Bomber?” she asks, and Parker’s look of confusion only grows. 

“The kid who blew up the bus?” she asks. “I’ve heard a few things, but wh—”

She stops. She looks down at the photo booth strips, seemingly examining Cassidy for any trace of murderous psychopath. 

“Was he—?” Parker starts. 

Mac nods. “Yeah.”

“Oh my God,” says Parker, and Mac feels tears blossoming in her eyes. 

“He wasn’t—” she tries. Takes a deep breath; wipes her eyes before the tears can fall. “He wasn’t like that,” she says, and she can almost  _ feel _ Parker’s skepticism. 

“He was sweet and nervous and smart and funny and I  _ loved _ him,” she tells Parker. “He was just—he was  _ so  _ fucked up and no one knew about it.”

Parker doesn’t meet her eyes, looking down at the CD again; tracing the letters. 

_ For Mac, because I like you a lot. Love, Cassidy ♡. _

“I know you don’t believe me,” Mac says, and Parker looks up. She opens her mouth to speak, but Mac cuts her off. “No, I totally—I get it. He was a murderer. He killed twelve people—” Parker’s eyes widen. Mac guesses she wasn’t quite specific enough about the scope of Cassidy’s crimes. “But he was—he didn’t want to,” she says. “He had all this trauma and shit that he just, like, kept bottled up inside, and it really fucked him up in the long run.” 

The words sound fake even to her, but Parker just says “Can I ask—”

“He was—it was, y’know, sexual abuse,” she says in the simplest terms possible, because she doesn’t think she can say  _ he was molested by his little league coach who also happened to be the mayor and his father didn’t give a shit about him and his brother treated him like crap and all that shit made him kill twelve people, steal my clothes and throw himself off the highest roof in Neptune  _ without bursting into tears. 

“Oh my God,” Parker says again. 

“These two other kids wanted to come forward,” Mac finds herself saying, “but he—he felt like he couldn’t let that happen, so he—”

“Holy shit.”

Mac gives a little laugh. “Yeah,” she says. “Holy shit.”

“Please don’t feel like you need to be sorry,” she continues. “He was—he did terrible things. Honestly, no one except me and Dick still give a shit about him.”

“Dick Casablancas?” Parker asks, and Mac nods. 

“He was his brother,” she explains. 

“Oh my God. Is that why Dick—”

“Acts like that?” Mac finishes for her. “No. I’ve known him since first grade and he’s pretty much always been trying as hard as he can to live up to his name.”

Parker laughs. 

“His dad fucked him up, though. Both of them. It’s—he’s an asshole, but it’s not his fault,” Mac says, and she can’t quite figure out why she’s defending  _ Dick Casablancas,  _ but she goes on anyway. “Cassidy was soft and sensitive and their dad didn’t give a shit about him because of it. He kind of—I think he’s the reason Dick’s like that. He’s spent, like, their entire lives enforcing all this toxic masculine shit on them, so… I don’t know. He’s an asshole, I just—it’s not his fault.”

“That’s fucked up,” says Parker. Mac just nods. 

“Would it be crazy if I told you I missed him?” she asks after a second. “I—the kid I knew, he wasn’t—”

Parker cuts her off. “You loved him,” she says. “You don’t get over that too easy.”

Mac says nothing. 

“He looks sweet,” Parker says, running a finger over Cassidy’s face in one of the photos. “He looked at you like you were everything he ever needed.”

And yeah, Parker thinks of love in clichés, but she’s not totally wrong. In the photo she’s looking at, Mac’s kissing Cassidy on the cheek and he’s blushing, his eyes crinkling into a smile. Mac can’t remember another time she’d seen him quite so happy. 

“He loved you,” Parker says, and Mac can’t help the sob that escapes her. 

If he loved her, why did he do it? If he loved her, why did he leave her naked and alone in a hotel room on what was supposed to be the best night of her life?

“Mac…” Parker starts, but she can’t follow through. Mac just cries harder. 

She feels Parker wrap her in a hug; feels her body gently swaying in her arms. 

“It’s okay,” Parker says, “You’re okay.” 

Mac just sobs into her shoulder. 

She tries to forget, and it’s nice when it happens, but it all has to come crashing back down eventually, and when it does?

Mac never knows how to feel. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> All mistakes are my own, please let me know if you see any!
> 
> Kudos/Comments are greatly appreciated!


End file.
